Heretics' almanac

What to do about election fraud

Although it's not hitting the airwaves much, there is quite a bit of debate in certain corners about the legitimacy of the 2004 presidential election.  A thorough primer on one side of the controversy is in several installments here, here, here, here, and here.  A thorough primer on the other side of the controversy consists of the following words: Get over it.  He won.

So far it's been assumed that the exit pollsters screwed up: they simply got it wrong when they found that Kerry was headed for a victory in several battleground states.  But now statisticians are saying that the exit pollsters in fact may have been right - it's extremely unlikely that they'd be that far off in all those places. 

I'm not sure what to make of it, but I think the issue deserves more study.  In the meantime, a number of people are filing suit to reëxamine the vote results.  It's doubtful that these will be resolved in time.

I have three points to make:

The dubious legacy of UN GA resolution 181

This BlogBurst piece is cross-posted by participating websites, to commemorate a milestone in Israel's history. The list of the participating sites is appended at the end of this post.  TOH to Israpundit for organizing it all and providing us with this introduction:

Today is the anniversary of the UN vote on resolution 181, which approved the partition of the western part Palestine into a predominately Jewish state and a predominately Arab state. (It is vital to recall that the UN partition plan referred to western Palestine, to underscore that in 1921 the eastern part was ripped off the Jewish National Home by the British Government and handed over to the then Emir Abdullah.)

The partition plan was approved by 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions.

The 33 countries that cast the “Yes” vote were: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Union of South Africa, USSR, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela. (Among other countries, the list includes the US, the three British Dominions, all the European countries except for Greece and the UK, but including all the Soviet-block countries.)

The 13 countries that chose the Hall of Shame and voted “No” were: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen. (Ten of these are Moslem countries; Greece has the special distinction of being the only European country to have joined the Hall of Shame.)

The ten countries that abstained are: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

To all this I say:

Conventional wisdom holds that UN General Assembly Resolution 181 was instrumental in the formation of the State of Israel.  Indeed, at the time of the resolution, there was much rejoicing among Jews worldwide, as the resolution was perceived to have given legitimacy to the Zionist enterprise.  To this day, some assert that the UN "created" Israel and therefore has the power to take back what it once gave. 

As it turned out, the resolution was nothing but an empty gesture to the Jewish people and has mostly done a disservice to Israel and indeed to the entire region.  It gives the UN a dubious legacy, and it is time to reassess its actual meaning.  Israel owes the United Nations nothing but contempt.

Here's why:

Undermining a Norwegian fourth estate

Ester Kristoffersen lodged an official complaint against the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) for misrepresenting her views and several aspects of events she led to highlight the effects of terrorism.  Read more about this here, here, and here, but the bottom line is that NRK a) misled Kristoffersen about the intentions behind their report; b) guided her response during the taping; and b) aired a report that selectively used quotes, facts, and other pieces of information to give viewers an inaccurate impression of what was actually said.

Well, the organization Kristoffersen complained to what can be loosely translated to the Select Committee on Journalistic Standards (Pressens Faglige Utvalg), and this group couldn't find anything wrong with what NRK had done.  In other words, Norwegian journalistic standards allow a reporter to:

Thanksgiving 2004

Grocery stores, train stations, even gas stations are crowded today, as people are moving from point A to point B to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family. The live turkey population is far lower now than just a week ago, and in 48 hours much of their remains will be fully digested ane expelled.

Nearly all the traditional food for Thanksgiving is from New World sources: turkey, potato, yams, cranberries, and corn were unknown to Europeans before Columbus. At the time of the pilgrims, this was a vast unexplored continent with an abundance of natural resources and a civilization untouched by the Roman era, the European dark ages, and the motion of territorial expansion. The pilgrims didn't believe in religious freedom, but rather another theocratic regime. They lived in the same place as today's Americans but in a completely different world. They could never have imagined what their settlement would have turned into.

Bush has promised that he'll seek strict constructionists to replace any Supreme Court justices that retire in his next term. If the pilgrims were our standard for this, we'd have judges who believed in trial by ordeal, considered heresy a crime, and distinguished the initiated in a faith superior to those who weren't. They would have been bothered more by today's risqué fashion than by slavery and the genocide of Native Americans.

There is much we can admire the pilgrims for, and we can take pride in the liberty they found here. But they only caught - and started - the fragments of what would America great. There's more to this day than indigenous plant- and wildlife and funny hats.

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Prevantable or payable morbidity

I read yesterday in my trusty WSJ that the CDC may have overstated the number of deaths that could have been prevented if people hadn't been obese.  The problem appears to be related to the way the CDC adjusted for "age and other factors."  Still, they said, obesity firmly remains the second most prevalent cause of preventable deaths in the US, after smoking but before alcohol.

Studies like this must be incredibly difficult to design and execute.  Since we'll all die sooner or later, attributing a single cause to a death is all but impossible.  Nobody dies of obesity - they die of complications caused by obesity, such as heart disease, diabetes, etc.  And since obesity isn't exactly a binary condition either, we're trying to correlate two elusive figures to come up with an exact number.  This is further complicated by the fact that medical science is constantly coming up with new ways to extend the lives of obese and sick people - better treatment for diabetes, new ways to treat heart disease, medicine against hypertension, cholesterol, etc.) 

Honest but unrealistic candidacy

I am extremely cautiously optimistic that Arafat's departure from the scene is encouraging the formation of a responsible Palestinian leadership and a regime based on order rather than divisiveness.  If all goes well, Palestinians will be the first Arab society to elect their leader in a truly democratic fashion, that is one in which candidates actually campaign against opposition. 

One such candidate, Ghassan Barham, has proposed that a peace deal with Israel be based on the 1947 partition plan recommended by the UN General Assembly.  This is either hopelessly naive, or else a PR ploy that will allow the war to continue.  It is entirely clear that Israel will never accept this plan for a long list of reasons.  Barham also wants the US kicked out of the negotiations, demands a full "right of return" for Palestinians plus compensation, and (to his credit) an end to the corrupt ways of the old guard in the Palestinian leadership.

Alternatives to the death penalty

New York Times features an article on the death penalty today, highlighting the case of one Michael Ross, who strangled "four teenage girls and two young women," after raping at least one of them.  Ross is scheduled to be executed in Connecticut on January 26th, after he gave up on further efforts to postpone what he supposedly felt was the inevitable.  So now he's headed for the clean, clinical execution chamber in Somers, CT, where the executioner will push a button in another room that will start the flow of poison into Ross's body.  He'll die, probably evacuating his bowels and making other messes that prison officials will clean up - after the curtain has been drawn so the witnesses don't have to see what a ghastly mess it is to kill someone.

(Scott Turow, the famed legal thriller writer, has written a compelling case agains the death penalty that is nicely summarized in this New Yorker article.)

Proponents of the death penalty like to point to cases like Ross.  This is a guy who deserves to die.  And opponents of the death penalty like to point out much more iffy cases, where there's doubts about the guilt, extenuating circumstances, or subsequent developments that make the criminal less culpable. 

More vote distribution statistics

I've compiled presidential election results by county to see if I could make any more sense of what it all means.  A lot of pundits, bloggers, etc., have pointed out that Kerry won in the urban areas, giving rise to the notion of an urban, or perhaps blue, archipelago that leans Democratic.

On the other hand, there were plenty of people who voted for Bush in strong blue counties, and Kerry voters in red counties.  The archipelago argument states that Kerry's votes were highly concentrated - that a small number of counties contributed to the overall return.  Of the 4602 counties reporting returns, 50% of Kerry's votes came from the 128 largest counties, and 80% from the 686 largest.  50% of Bush's votes came from the 234 largest counties, and 80% from the 943 largest.

More New York security

Today, another business call at a Manhattan office building not unlikely as a terrorist target.  Security here is very tight, and they even manage to confound potential perps by varying their routines to the point where it's never been the same in the 30-40 visits I've had there.  At any rate, my picture is unflatteringly accurate.  (The background has been Photoshopped a little to keep the place confidential):

Dick Morris forgets all about Mr. Jefferson

Several years ago, Dick Morris abandoned his career as a political strategist to dedicate himself to transforming the US from a Madisonian to a Jeffersonian democracy. He wanted me to help him with that lofty goal by designing a web-based system, but we weren't able to agree on the particulars of the vision.

I enjoyed getting to know him, short as our acqaintance was. I read several of his books with great interest.

Well, you can say a lot about the way our democracy has evolved since then, but I doubt that Mr. Jefferson (or Madison, for that matter) would have been all that encouraged. And Dick has move on to professional punditry within Fox News. After taking much of the credit for Clinton's election, he has turned on his employer, writing books on the alleged nastiness of both the former president and his wife.

This leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I never much appreciated all the interest in Newt Gingrich's personal life (to take the one prominent Republican victim of this trend), and I am hard pressed to see what public interest Dick's books serve.

One thing is for sure: it doesn't do much to improve participation in American politics. Mr. Jefferson, whose own personal life was far from untroubled, would have been disgusted.

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